Child Labour – Issues

Child LabourShahzadThe State Governments and NGOs to ensure that adequate steps are taken to eradicate child labour.Child labor is a pervasive problem throughout the world, especially in developing countries.Children work for a variety of reasons, the most important being poverty and the induced pressure upon them to escape from this plight. Though children are not well paid, they still serve as major contributors to family income in developing countries.Schooling problems also contribute to child labour, whether it be the inaccessibility of schools or the lack of quality education which forces parents to push their children into more profitable pursuits.Traditional factors such as rigid cultural and social roles in certain countries further limit educational attainment and increase child labour.Working children are the objects of extreme exploitation in terms of toiling for long hours for minimal pay. Their working conditions are especially severe, often not providing the stimulation for proper physical and mental development. Many of these children endure lives of pure deprivation.However, there are problems with the intuitive solution of immediately abolishing child labour to prevent such abuse.First, there is no international agreement defining child labour, making it hard to isolate cases of abuse, let alone abolish them.Second, many children may have to work in order to attend school so abolishing child labor may only hinder their education.Any plan of abolishment depends on schooling. The state could help by making it worthwhile for a child to attend school, whether it be by providing students with nutritional supplements or increasing the quality of education.